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§1 



1 NOTES FOR SPEECH 

S AT DINNER 

8 OCTOBER U 1855 

8 BY 

8 W. M. THACKERAY 
8 ON THE EVE OF HIS 
8 DEPARTURE FOR 
8 AMERICA 




|g Letter to Wm.C.Macready 




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T was but natural to 
suppose that, con- 
sidering Mr. Thack- 
eray's popularity 
among his friends, and the interest 
which attached to the object of his 
visit to America, a desire would be 
shown to invite him to a farewell 
dinner. The project being initiated, 
Mr. Peter Cunningham undertook 
the duties of secretary ; and all the 
preliminary arrangements were of 



"Memories of My Time including Personal 
Reminiscences of Eminent Men. by George Hod- 
der, author of 'Sketches of Life and Character,' 
etc. London, Tinsley Bros., 18 Catherine Street, 
Strand, 1870." pp. 257 — 264. 



the most satisfactory kind, care be- 
ing taken that the party should be 
entirely private, and that it should 
consist exclusively of Mr. Thack- 
eray's intimates. 

On the morning of the banquet 
he was in a state of great nervous 
anxiety, saying that it was very 
kind of his friends to give him a 
dinner, but that he wished it was 
over, for such things always set 
him trembling. "Besides," he ex- 
claimed, "I have to make a speech, 
and what am I to say ? Here, take 
a pen in your hand and sit down ; 
and I'll see if I can hammer out 
something. It's hammering now; 
I 'm afraid it will be stammering by 
and by." I did as he requested, and 
he dictated with much ease and flu- 
ency a speech— or rather the heads 



tmsmssm 

of a speech — which he proposed 
delivering in response to the inevi- 
table toast of his own health. 

This was on a morning in the 
first week of October, 1855, and the 
dinner took place at the London 
Tavern in the evening of the same 
day, the duties of chairman being 
delegated to Mr. Charles Dickens, 
who from the very beginning of his 
public career had always manifested 
a remarkable aptitude for that re- 
sponsible office. 

The following account of the af- 
fair was afterward published by a 
gentleman who was present on the 
occasion : — 



i 



I HE Thackeray din- 
ner was a triumph. 
Covers, we are as- 
sured, were laid for 
sixty; and sixty and no more sat 
down precisely at the minute named 
to do honor to the great novelist. 
Sixty very hearty shakes of the 
hand did Thackeray receive from 
sixty friends on that occasion ; and 
hearty cheers from sixty vociferous 
and friendly tongues followed the 
chairman's— Mr. Charles Dickens 
— proposal of his health, and of 
wishes for his speedy and success- 
ful return among us. Dickens— 



the best after-dinner speaker now 
alive — was never happier. He spoke 
as if he was fully conscious that it 
was a great occasion, and that the 
absence of even one reporter was a 
matter of congratulation, affording 
ample room to unbend. The table 
was in the shape of a horseshoe, 
having two vice-chairmen, and this 
circumstance was wrought up and 
played with by Dickens in the true 
Sam Weller and Charles Dickens 
manner. Thackeray, who is far 
from what is called a good speaker, 
outdid himself. There was his 
usual hesitation ; but this hesitation 
becomes his manner of speaking 
and his matter, and is never un- 
pleasant to his hearers, though it is, 
we are assured, most irksome to 
himself. This speech was full of 



£«SO 



pathos and humor and oddity, with 
bits of prepared parts imperfectly 
recollected, but most happily made 
good by the felicities of the passing 
moment. Like the "Last Minstrel/' 

" Each blank in faithless memory's void 
The poet's glowing thought supplied." 

It was a speech to remember for its 
earnestness of purpose and its un- 
doubted originality. Then the chair- 
man quitted, and many near and at 
a distance quitted with him. Thack- 
eray was on the move with the 
chairman, when, inspired by the 
moment, Jerrold took the chair, and 
Thackeray remained. Who is to 
chronicle what now passed? — what 
passages of wit — what neat and 
pleasant sarcastic speeches in pro- 
posing healths— what varied and 
pleasant, aye, and at times sarcastic 



acknowledgments ? Up to the time 
when Dickens left, a good reporter 
might have given all, and with ease, 
to future ages; but there could be 
no reporting what followed. There 
were words too nimble and too full 
\ Ipf of flame for a dozen Gurneys, all 
ears, to catch and preserve. Few 
will forget that night. There was 
an " air of wit " about the room for 
three days after. Enough to make 
the two companies, though down- 
right fools, right witty. 





am now fortunately 
enabled to give the 
original draft of the 
speech thus pictur- 
ed, and which as I have just stated, 
was written by me to Mr. Thack- 
eray's dictation on the morning of 
the dinner. It will be seen, from the 
occasional vacant spaces, that the 
writer of the above was correct in 
assuming that the speaker had in- 
tentionally left blanks with the view 
of supplying them at the moment. 
Some few sentences will be found 
to be quite incomplete ; but it is not 
very difficult to conjecture how Mr. 




Thackeray would fill them up ; 
though I believe I am right in say- 
ing that the speech as delivered fell 
far short of the speech as written. 
The latter has never been out of 
my possession since it came from 
Mr. Thackeray's lips; for, having 
once tested his power, and brought 
to light the thoughts which ani- 
mated him, he did not care for the 
MS., and did not even read it. I 
subjoin it, ipsissima verba : — 



10 




ffi 



know great num- 
bers of us here 
present have 
been invited to 
a neighboring palace where 
turtle, champagne, and all 
good things are as plentiful 
almost as here, and where 
there reigns a civic monarch 
with a splendid court of offi- 
cers, etc.—- The sort of greet- 
ing that I had myself to-day 
—-this splendor, etc.-— the 
bevy in the ante-room — have 

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Hf filled my bosom with an ela- ||| 
tion with which no doubt 
Sir Francis Graham Moon's 
throbs/ I am surrounded by 
respectful friends, etc. — and I 
feel myself like a Lord Mayor. gp 
To his lordship's delight and ||fl 
magnificence there is a draw- 
back. In the fountain of his 
pleasure there surges a bitter. 
He is thinking about the 9th 
of November, and I about the 
J 3th of October. 2 

Some years since, when I 
was younger and used to fre- 
quent jolly assemblies, I wrote 
a Bacchanalian song, to be 

1 Sir F. G. Moon, Bart, was at that time Lord 
Mayor of London. 

2 The day on which he was to start for J 



r America. 



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chanted after dinner, etc. — I 
wish some one would sing 
that song now to the tune of 
| the "Dead March in Saul/' 
etc. — not for me — I am 
miserable enough; but for 
you, who seem in a great deal 
too good spirits. I tell you I 
am not—- -all the drink in 
Mr. Bathe's 1 cellar won't 
make me. There may be 
sherry there five hundred years 
old - — Columbus may have 
taken it out from Cadiz with 
him when he went to discover 
America, and it won't make 
me jolly, etc. — and yet, en- 
tirely unsatisfactory as this 



■ Tiie then proprietor of tile London Tavern. 




J3 






feast is to me, I should like 
some more. Why can't you 
give me some more ? I don't 
care about them costing two 
guineas a head. It is not the 
turtle I value. Let us go to 
Simpson's fish ordinary™ or 
to Bertolini's or to John o' 
Groat's, etc. — I don't want 
to go away — I cling round 
the mahogany-tree. 

In the course of my pro- 
found and extensive reading I 
have found it is the habit of 
the English nation to give 
dinners to the unfortunate. I 
have been living lately with 
some worthy singular fellows 
one hundred and fifty or one 



J4 



hundred and sixty years old. 
I find that upon certain occa- 
sions the greatest attention 
was always paid them. They 
might call for anything they 
liked for dinner. My friend 
Simon Frazer, Lord Lovat, 
about one hundred and nine 
years since, I think, partook 
very cheerfully of minced veal 
and sack before he was going 
on his journey ' — Lord Fer- 
rers (Rice) 2 — -I could tell you 

1 He was beheaded in the year 1745 for fighting 
in the cause of the Pretender, in the Scottish rebel- 
Eon of 1745. 

2 Executed at Tyburn in the year J760 for the 
murder of one Johnson, the receiver of his estates. 
His lordship was allowed to ride from the Tower 
to the scaffold in his own landau, and appeared 
gayly dressed in a light-colored suit of clothes, em- 
broidered with silver. It was doubtless to this cir- 
cumstance that Mr. Thackeray intended to allude 
in filling up the vacuum. 



J5 



I 



a dozen jolly stories about 
feasts of this sort. I remember 
a particular jolly one at which 
I was present, and which took 
place at least nine hundred 
years ago. My friend Mr. 
Macready gave it at Fores 
Castle, North Britain, Covent 
Garden. That was a mag- 
nificent affair indeed. The 
tables were piled with most 
splendid fruits — gorgeous 
dish-covers glittered in endless 
perspective — Macbeth — 
Macready, I mean — taking 
up a huge beaker, shining 
with enormous gems that 
must have been worth many 
hundred millions of money, 



16 



filled it out of a gold six-gal- 
lon jug, and drank courteously 
to the general health of the 
whole table. Why did he put 
it down ? What made him, 
in the midst of that jolly party, 
appear so haggard and melan- 
choly ? It was because he saw 
before him the ghost of John 
Cooper, with chalked face and 
an immense streak of vermil- 
ion painted across his throat ! 
No wonder he was disturbed. 
In like manner I have before 
me at this minute the horrid 
figure of a steward, with a 
basin perhaps, or a glass of 
brandy and water, which he 
will press me to drink, and 



J7 



which I shall try and swallow, 
and which won't make me 
any better— I know it won't. 
Then there's the dinner, 
which we all of us must re- 
member in our school-boy 
days, and which took place 
twice or thrice a year at home, 
on the day before Dr. Birch 
expected his young friends to 
reassemble at his academy, 
Rodwell Regis. Don't you 
remember how the morning 
was spent ? How you went 
about taking leave of the gar- 
den, and the old mare and 
foal, and the paddock, and 
the pointers in the kennel ; 
and how your little sister 



J8 



wistfully kept at your side all 
day ; and how you went and 
looked at that confounded 
trunk which old Martha was 
packing with the new shirts, 

H \ sM anc ^ at *^ at h eav Y ca ^ e P ac ked 
up in the play-box ; and how 

kind "the governor" was all 

day; and how at dinner he 

said, "Jack — or Tom — pass 

the bottle" in a very cheery 

voice ; and how your mother 

had got the dishes she knew 

you liked best ; and how you 

had the wing instead of the 

leg, which used to be your 

ordinary share ; and how that 

dear, delightful, hot raspberry 

rolly-polly pudding, good as it 



19 



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was, and fondly beloved by 
you, yet somehow had the ef- 
fect of the notorious school 
stick-jaw, and choked you and 
stuck in your throat ; and how 
the gig came ; and then, how 
you heard the whirl of the 
mail-coach wheels, and the 
tooting of the guard's horn, 
as with an odious punctuality 
the mail and the four horses 
came galloping over the hill. 
— Shake hands, good-by ! 
God bless everybody ! Don't 
cry, sister. — Away we go! 
and to-morrow we begin with 
Dr. Birch, and six months at 
Rodwell Regis ! 



20 




21 




22 



m ' x 



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Clarendon Hotel, New York. 
Nov. 20. 

My dear Macready. 

I have been wanting to write 
you a line ever since I have 
been here, and waiting for a 
day's quiet when I could have 
leisure to send a letter big 
enough to travel 3000 miles 
— but there never is a day's 
quiet here It is day after day 
skurry & turmoil friends call- 
ing strangers calling newspa- 
per articles bawling out abuse 
or telling absurd personalities 



23 



— you know the life well 
enough, and have undergone 
the persecution in your time 
The dollars hardly compen- 
sate for it ; nor the extraordi- 
nary kindness and friendliness 
of the real friends on whom 
\f $m one lights. Several of your's 
are here and in Boston I know 
I shall meet many more. Did 
Forster tell you I had met 
Hall and C King and good 
old Dr Francis who all asked 
with such sincere regard after 
you and seemed so happy to 
hear you looked well ? I told 
them that I had seen you the 
last day I was in London and 
how very kind it was of you to 



24 





come all the way from Sher- 
borne to give me a parting 
shake of the hand. My dear 
fellow, it is about that horrible 
||i nightmare of a dinner I want 
to speak to you. You must 
know I intended to say some- 
thing funny about Macbeth & 
Banquo; and then to finish 
off with the prettiest compli- 
ment and give some notion of 
the kindness I was feeling— 
I blundered in the joke left out 
the kindness & compliment — 
made an awful fiasco. If I lose 
my head when I try speech- 
making, all is up with me. I 
say what I dont mean, what I 
dont know afterwards the Lord 




25 




forgive me— and you must if I 
said aught (I dont know for 
certain that I did or didn't) 
w 11 was unpleasing I am sav- 
age sometimes when my heart 
is at it's very tenderest, and I 
want to tell you now— and 
no other words are authentic 
and if I said 'em I deny 'em — 
that I felt pleased & touch'd 
by your kindness and apolo- 
gize hereby for my own blun- 
der and cordially shake you 
by the hand. 

As far as money goes I am 
doing great things here & the 
dollars are rolling in. I shall 
make all but J000£ in 5 
weeks — though not of course 



26 



to continue at this rate. At 
first the papers didn't like the 
lectures: but they are better 
pleased with the second read- 
ing, & the public likewise, 
who begin to find that what 
seems very easy is not done 
in a hurry. What the people 
like is sentiment, and I could 
not give them any of this ar- 
ticle except about old George 
III whom they received very 
tenderly. I polished him off 
with an image taken from the 
death scene of an old king 
whom you have heard of — 
depicted w 

— Here at the 'w* came in 
a visitor; then another visi- 



27 






tor ; then good old Dr Francis 
who came to doctor me ; and 
now lo the post hour has come 
and I cant finish that interest- 
ing story about George HI, & 
the old king you used to know 
in times when you wore 
crowns, & of whom, being 
dead, it was said Vex not his 
ghost o let him pass he hates 
him who would upon the rack 
of this tough world stretch him 
out longer. What a nice kind 
little bit this is of the old man, 
w 11 he writes you ! Good bye 
my dear Macready and believe 
me sincerely 

Yours always 

W M THACKERAY 



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